


The Tuesday Group

by Kitkatkimble



Series: The Tuesday Group (and Other Stories) [1]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anduin Wrynn Has Terrible Friends, Bad Matchmaking, F/F, M/M, MMORPGs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-04-04 20:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4151931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitkatkimble/pseuds/Kitkatkimble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when three members of your raid group /gquit on you after the first boss?</p><p>Nothing, because Lorna has you covered.</p><p>Starring Anduin Wrynn as the long-suffering healer, Wrathion as the rogue who doesn't understand aggro, and the rest of the Dweeb Team as their friendly, lovable, matchmakers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [Insert Character Name Here]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lorna accidentally ruins everything

“Alright, Lorna, could you get the guy on the far right? Cool, thank you. Aerin and Dez, when you’re ready.”

Lorna stuns the ogre then leans back in her chair and drops her feet onto the desk next to her monitor. The Dweeb Team, properly known under the guild name ‘The Tuesday Group’, are busy doing a Highmaul run, which she is supposed to be participating in. The useful thing about playing a hunter is that barely anyone notices if you’re just auto-attacking.

“Alright guys, focus fire on Vul’gor please.”

She yawns and focuses back on the screen. Tess is right next to her, merrily healing away. She’s playing her druid, as per usual; Tess is very predictable. She’s a good healer, too, very conscientious of the individual, which is why she joins them for 10-mans. Lorna can practically hear her concerned concentration across their Skype call.

“Liam, please stop running right next to the mobs.”

She snickers. Liam is playing a hunter, but seems to keep forgetting that he’s got ranged attacks. Him and his pet wolf, Cuddles, are both right behind Vul’gor. No wonder Tess is concentrating.

Lorna and Liam both play hunters, but Lorna’s better at it. She’s got guns and explosives and all sorts of cool buffs. Liam’s marksmanship specced, and spends most of his time running straight into the fray, shooting anything that moves.

“Nice one guys, now get ready for Kargath. Anyone need healing? Aerin?”

Aerin is their main tank. She plays a tiny dwarf warrior, but she has a considerable knack for getting mobs pissed at her. Lorna respects her for that. It’s funny listening to her talk – she actually does have a Scottish accent, just like how Lorna, Liam and Tess all have a mild received pronunciation. (Lorna’s met her before, when she was down south for work or something. Aerin is also five foot nothing. It’s uncanny.)

“Dez?”

Dezco – no one else is allowed to call him Dez – is their off tank. He’s a sweetheart. Technically he’s Horde side, but he joins them on a draenei for raids. He’s quiet, doesn’t talk much, but he doesn’t need to. Lorna learnt the quick way that he’s probably better than all of them – somehow he’s both holy and protection specced, and has no trouble switching between.

She’s been saved by his bubbles more than once, so she likes him.

“Great. Remember to keep an eye on the stands this time, Baine.”

Baine is Dezco’s cousin, Lorna thinks, or some other extended relation. He’s their utility man, and zips around hammering adds and intercepting mobs. He’s a pretty funny guy when you get to know him, very dry sense of humour, and Lorna’s about 83% sure that Tess got him a #TeamDad mug at one point. She sees it out the corner of their video chat sometimes.

There’s radio silence for a few minutes while they whittle away at Kargath Bladefist, until he drops and Lorna swings her feet back to the floor. Please drop gear please drop gear please drop –

No gear. God damn it.

“Nice work guys! Nearly beat our record there! Now let’s – wait, what?”

[Medan has left the instance group.]

[Moira has left the instance group.]

[Vanessa has left the instance group.]

“Um. Okay. I… it looks like we’ll have to um, try this again another night. Maybe they’ll – ”

[Medan has left the guild.]

[Moira has left the guild.]

[Vanessa has left the guild.]

“Damn it.”

Then there’s Anduin.

Or, as Lorna fondly refers to him, Prince Anduin Sparkles-a-lot.

Anduin’s their GM and their raid leader most of the time. He’ll cheerfully defer to anyone who wants to lead, which is precisely why no one does. He’s literally a Disney prince; he’s got feasts, flasks and potions, augment runes, and to top it all off, he’s the best damn healer Lorna’s ever met. Next to Tess. But Lorna’s biased towards Tess, so she shouldn’t really be the judge.

There’s a sigh, and Anduin turns on his Skype camera. He doesn’t look annoyed, just a little tired. His blond hair is sticking up at the back.

“Does anyone know anyone who could come in and finish this with us?” he asks. “’Cause if not, we’re gonna have to call it off for tonight.”

There’s some faint background murmuring that Lorna doesn’t really pay attention to, instead checking if she’s got anything she could auction off. Just a bunch of augment runes she doesn’t use, but she’d feel bad if she sold them off.

“Lorna? You know a bunch of people.”

“Hmm?” She looks up, switching on her cam. “Uh… let me check.”

No one’s online. Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. Her schematics guy is here. “Does a combat rogue sound okay?”

“As long as they’re nicer than Vanessa,” Liam says.

Vanessa is a decent rogue, but she has a habit of getting annoyed at the littlest things. Lorna guesses she’s got family troubles, but she never asked. Vanessa always flicked off her mic whenever things got personal. She thinks that Vanessa could have been someone she got along well with, had they got the opportunity, but it seems like Vanessa beat her to the punch.

“He’s alright,” she replies. “Let me just check if he’s free.”

To [Wrathion]: hey you wanna come finish hm with us

[Wrathion] whispers: Which boss are you up to?

To [Wrathion]: just finished bladefist

[Wrathion] whispers: How many people do you need?

To [Wrathion]: three dps

[Wrathion] whispers: Perfect. We’ll be there in five minutes.

Lorna looks back to the camera and gives Anduin a nod. “Three DPS incoming. I don’t know who he’s bringing with him but I know he likes rogues. They’re probably all rogues.”

“Three rogues, okay.” Anduin frowns then smiles, and nods. “Thanks, Lorna.”

He really means it, too. That’s the thing with Anduin, the real reason why all of them raid together each week. He’s not the smartest (that’s Tess), he’s not the quickest (that’s Baine), but he’s so bloody nice that he can wrap them all around his pinkie finger and none of them will care.

Lorna doesn’t do much, but she likes being wanted. She smiles back.

Anduin disappears from his seat, and the rest of the group dissolve into mindless gossip. Baine and Tess start duelling, Lorna’s chatting with Aerin about their soon-to-arrive guests, and Liam is off doing whatever it is Liam does when he’s not throwing himself into melee combat or drinking beer. It’s cheerful and non-serious and above all, it’s practically routine.

Then Lorna gets a ping from Wrathion telling her that he’s just outside, and she invites him to the raid group.

The obligatory round of ‘hello’s passes through. Wrathion plays a human rogue, and with him he’s brought two more: a gnome and a human. They’re called Left and Right respectively. Lorna gives them points for cute.

“How did we end up with only two ranged DPS?” Aerin asks.

“Luck,” Baine says, and then, “Do we invite them to the Skype call too?”

“No, it’s alright,” Lorna says, already searching through her inventory for spare feasts. “Wrathion’s not a big fan of talking. He’ll be fine if we just type whatever needs to be said.”

Dezco, being the brave soul he is, immediately sets about having a conversation with Wrathion &co. Left and Right don’t respond. Wrathion gives brief, painfully grammatically correct, responses. Lorna almost feels bad for Dezco, except he’s better than her in all ways and therefore her empathy is wasted.

Anduin must have come back at sometime, as his camera has been disabled and he’s talking. Something about positioning and knockbacks. Lorna, admittedly, rarely listens. She’s got this.

They kill that weird boar at the drop point, and Lorna realises that Wrathion actually fits quite well in the team. There’s a lot of melee fighters, to be fair, but his DPS output is high enough that she figures it’s all good.

Anduin’s somehow finding the time to type in relatively detailed reminders into the raid chat. He must have introduced himself when Lorna was filing her nails; Wrathion’s actually deigning to speak with him as if he’s paying attention.

It’s when they get to the weird fungal boss that things start going to hell.

Lorna first notices when they’re killing the mobs with the flamethrowers. The orcs already run around randomly, which means both Aerin and Dezco are tanking full-on, but Wrathion doesn’t seem to have got the memo regarding appropriate threat ranges. He zips after one mob and just takes them down in a minute flat; by the time Aerin’s wailing away on them, they’re down to 19% health and Wrathion just flips targets.

He’s also got half a dozen trinkets or doodads or devices or _something,_ because Lorna’s pretty sure rogues can’t cast that many spells. Or any at all, come to think of it.

[RaidLeader][Anduin]: wrathion pls stop pulling aggro

Lorna can tell Anduin’s finding it annoying. Having more people to heal always annoys him. Tess doesn’t put up with it when she’s healing; if someone other than the tank pulls aggro intentionally, she lets them die. Anduin never does. Apparently he feels bad and thinks that it’s his job as healer to keep everyone alive, even if they’re being stupid.

Lorna can feel it in her bones. Anduin and Wrathion are going to get along like a house on fire.

Wrathion doesn’t stop pulling aggro. He doesn’t even seem to realise that aggro is something to worry about, even when Tess pointedly stops healing him.

The weird fungal dude – Brackenspore, that’s the name – proves to be the clincher.

[RaidLeader][Anduin]: okay lorna and baine can you take the spores, aerin pls hold boss, dez can you take the fungal add? liam on flamethrower. everyone else focus on the boss. tess i’ll take the party if you watch the spores

There’s a chorus of aye-ayes, and then Aerin heads in.

It seems to be going okay. Lorna’s bouncing around, firing off explosives and whatnot. Wrathion’s mostly behaving himself. Left and Right seem to be scarily competent.

Then the adds start popping in.

Wrathion immediately goes after the spores, darting in and taking them down before Lorna even has time to fire a DoT. He doesn’t seem to care about the damage, he just runs through the heal-y mushrooms every so often. Anduin’s mumbling to himself in the Skype chat, and Lorna resists the urge to laugh.

Thankfully, Wrathion doesn’t try to solo the fungal add, whatever it’s called (Fungal Flesh-Easter – isn’t that creative). Dezco cheerfully wallops away at it, even when Wrathion makes a pass on his way to another Spore Shooter, and soon enough they’re sitting back with one more Brackenspore kill under their belt.

[RaidLeader][Anduin]: great job guys!! that was a minute faster than our old record!

Lorna does laugh at that.

The rest of the raid passes similarly; Anduin giving out instructions, Wrathion completely ignoring him, and their boss times dropping and dropping. The more adds there are, the more Wrathion seems to flip between them all, catching them in stuns and dealing out very fast bursts of damage. Thankfully, he doesn’t get hit so much, which means that Anduin gets a bit of a break. Lorna checks out his gear curiously, and realises that his versatility rating is crazy high, which makes sense. He deals a lot, and resists it in equal amounts, which makes him good at adds.

He and Baine end up banding together. Baine catches the adds in stunlocks and then Wrathion eviscerates them. Lorna spends most of her time watching them when she isn’t key smashing.

The good thing to playing survival hunters: ability rotations mean nothing.

Fighting the Imperator turns out to be quite something. Left and Right seem to move as one unit, rather than two players, and Lorna thinks for a moment that they might be bots. Until Left does /rude to the Imperator, which sends Lorna into fits of laughter that Anduin tries to talk her out of.

Seriously, though. Gnomes.

Tess decides that Wrathion is worth healing about halfway through the fight, so she and Anduin swap roles as her mana begins to wane. This means that Lorna’s now getting healed by Tess. Score.

She’s momentarily distracted, until she realises that they’re at that bit where they need to split up again. Wrathion, surprise surprise, is already pummelling away at one of the war mages. Tess is making concerned noises over Skype.

“He’s going to die,” she says worriedly. “He really is. And I actually like him. Bugger.”

“He’ll be fine.” Lorna shoots off a few CCs and goes back to her phone. “Wrathion’s slippery. Plus, you’re healing him, right? He can’t die.”

Tess makes some embarrassed noises, and Liam growls. Lorna gives him a little wave.

Wrathion ends up dealing the killing blow – of course he does, the little sod – and finally Lorna gets her loot. New boots, nice. ‘Face Kickers’, too. Clearly these were made for her.

“So,” she says, trying on the boots. Nah. She’ll have to transmog them. “What do we think of Wrathion?”

“Can we keep ‘im?” Aerin asks.

“Really?” Liam sounds pretty surprised. “But he made tanking really hard, didn’t he?”

Lorna can hear Aerin’s shrug. “Sure, but I like a challenge. Ye saw how fast he took down those adds. He and those twins are way better than Med’an, Vanessa, and Moira.”

“They were quite good,” Lorna admits. “Dezco, what do you think?”

Dezco hums thoughtfully. “He seems good, I wouldn’t mind him on the team,” he says slowly. “But only if everyone else agrees.”

“I think the same,” Baine says. “They shaved nearly forty seconds off our last record, and Wrathion seems to have plenty of tricks up his sleeve.”

“He’s very annoying, but I like him,” Tess says brightly. “I vote yes.”

Liam coughs. “Andy?”

“Hmm?” Anduin must have been daydreaming. “Sorry, what were we talking about?”

“Do we keep Wrathion, Left, and Right?”

There’s a brief moment of hesitation, unlike Anduin, and the entire group hold their breath.

“Yes,” he decides eventually. “Alright. Shall I ask them?”

They call out a resounding yes, which gets Anduin laughing, and shortly three names are added to the guild roster.

“Seriously, though, how is his damage done that high?” Lorna asks, scrolling back through the recount stats. Wrathion has headed off to do whatever it is he does when he’s not doing his weird trading business, and the rest of the group have relaxed into their little after-raid-party. “He basically came away with 25% of the total damage, like, what even is that.”

Skype cameras begin to get switched on, person by person, and the sound of bottles clinking and chip packets rustling echoes through her headphones. Thinking about chips makes her hungry. She’s probably still got something left in the fridge, but Liam hasn’t stopped over in a while, so it’s probably nothing edible.

Tess’ loads first, and Lorna shoots her a wide grin. She returns it. Tess looks nothing like her brother, and seems to have inherited all the good looks of the family. Lorna’s known her for ages.

Baine drops in next, and for once he has his ponytail undone. And yes, there’s the #TeamDad mug. “He’s impressive.”

“Someone’s going to have to tell him about aggro, though,” Liam grouses. His beard is doing something weird. Lorna sends him a message reminding him about the existence of razors.

Aerin and Tess both laugh at that, and Lorna lets out a snort of her own. “Liam, ye wouldn’t know the first thing about aggro even if ye invented the damn thing,” Aerin says. “Mr. I’m-gonna-run-straight-into-the-middle-of-combat.”

Lorna zones out temporarily as she finishes off the thing of Sprite she has sitting next to her, which of course manages to spill and get all over her headset cable. She’s beauty, she’s grace, and all that. Not Lorna Crowley. Lorna Crowley is clumsy and bad at focusing.

She glances back at the screen to see Tess laughing at her, and she pokes out her tongue.

“You’re being quiet, Anduin,” Dezco prods. “Do you not like Wrathion?”

“No, no, I do!” Anduin protests immediately, waving away the good natured ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. “Stop it, you’re all terrible. No, I think he’s good.”

Baine raises an eyebrow, and Anduin gives him a roll of his eyes. “But…”

“But nothing. Just me being stupid. You guys did great today, Lorna even managed to stay on track for an entire boss fight!”

That derails the conversation successfully, but Lorna doesn’t miss the way Anduin slides back into his Contemplative mode. She glances at Baine; he’s seen it too.

A message pops up on her Skype.

Baine Bloodhoof: I’ll talk to him after this.

Lorna Crowley: is he upset?

Baine Bloodhoof: I don’t know. A little bit, I think. I’ll tell you once I know.

Lorna Crowley: tell tess

Lorna Crowley: she’ll go over and do all the cuddly stuff

Lorna Crowley: then she’ll tell me

Baine Bloodhoof: I will.

She glances back at Anduin’s little panel. He doesn’t seem upset. He’s laughing with Dezco and Aerin. But, she thinks idly, looking over at Liam, you can never really tell what someone’s thinking behind the mask they put up in front.

Yet, it’s Anduin. Whatever’s bothering him will be sorted out in no time. They just got a bunch of skilled new additions to their raid group _and_ their guild. He has to be happy about that, right?

She waves goodbye and logs off for the night, sliding her feet back onto the floor and gathering up her glass and empty Sprite bottle. She’s got a shift tomorrow that she needs to be awake for, there’s no point staying up late just to sleep through her alarm.

Her phone pings with various Skype messages as she cleans her teeth and tugs a brush through her hair. Wrathion had been relatively well behaved. At least that hadn’t backfired on her – she doesn’t want to mess up again. It’d been on her recommendation that they bring in Vanessa, after all, and look how well that turned out. But no, Wrathion had done his job, and done it well.

Whatever, she thinks, dropping into bed. It’s just a game. Sure, it was the one thing that connected all of her friends, but a few bad apples didn’t spoil the basket and all that jazz.

Still. She does wonder what’s bothering Anduin.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay but what if we had a warcraft fic...with the characters playing warcraft!!!
> 
> as you can probably tell it's holidays and i have entirely too much time on my hands


	2. Raid Difficulty: Heroic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Baine is better than literally everyone

“Did you know,” says Tess, “they had to create an entirely new animation engine for Merida’s hair?”

“I never saw that movie,” Baine says.

“You’re missing out.”

It’s a Thursday afternoon. Most of the Dweeb Team are busy, but Tess is online and keeping Baine company while he farms transmogrification gear on his main. They look ridiculous; a hulking tauren in mismatched armour, and a tiny human in a black dress.

“What was the deal with Anduin two days ago?” Tess asks. Their cameras are off, but she sounds concerned.

Baine hums thoughtfully, a low rumble of sound that echoes through their mics. “He was put off balance by Wrathion. He wouldn’t say much.”

“Oh, the poor thing.” Tess one-shots a nearby mob and does a little dance. “Not sure how to respond to suddenly losing his authority, is he? I had a friend like that once. Really unfortunate, actually – ”

She rambles on, and Baine lets her voice serve as ambient music. He likes listening to Tess; she’s sweet and easy to listen to, even if he isn’t paying attention to what she’s saying at all. He takes a drink of tea from his #TeamDad mug.

“They’ll be joining us on Tuesdays now, though,” she says, and Baine tunes back in. “I hope Anduin doesn’t mind. That’s going to be awkward.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure he will. Oh, hello, Liam’s online.”

There’s the sound of a scuffle from the end of Liam’s mic, and a second later he says, “I have company, by the way. Hey, Andy, I was saving that potion for PvP!”

Baine snorts. He has no doubt as to what’s going on down their end of the line; Anduin is hanging out at Liam’s place and hijacking his character. Probably his pantry as well. Baine has only met Anduin in person once, but even from that one encounter he knows that Anduin is almost amusingly friendly.

Liam’s good to him. Mostly because Anduin gives to many shits and Liam gives none at all.

High praise coming from Baine Bloodhoof.

“So, what’s the plan next Tuesday?” Tess asks.

There’s a brief moment of silence, then Anduin hijacks Liam’s mic. “Hold on, I’m putting this thing on speaker.”

“Thanks,” mutters Liam, and evidently they’re both being picked up now.

“I was thinking Highmaul again, on Heroic this time,” Anduin says. “Now that we have Wrathion, Left, and Right, I think we can do it much better than we did last time.”

There’s a brief moment of respectful silence in honour of the last time they tried Heroic Highmaul. Baine tries not to shudder.

“You don’t want to do normal again?” Tess asks hesitantly. “Not that I think we can’t do Heroic – of course we can – I’m just. Well. I think we all remember last time.”

“We don’t talk about last time,” Liam says, and Baine can _hear_ the shudder in his voice.

They have dubbed it ‘the Incident’ and don’t like to discuss it.

“We’ve only got two healers, though,” Tess points out, and Baine hums his agreement.

“I was thinking that Dez could be our flexible third healer,” Anduin says, and Liam’s character suddenly runs up next to them. He waves. “He can swap back to off-tank for the bosses that don’t need so many.”

“Then who’ll replace him?”

Anduin coughs. “Actually, I was thinking Baine could. If you’re alright with that?”

Baine blinks. He’s not a tank. He’s not even that fantastic at DPS, he’s just very good at doing what needs to be done. And right clicking. “I don’t know, Anduin.”

“You wouldn’t have to worry so much,” Anduin assures him. “I mean, we’ve got Aerin. She basically carries the team anyway.”

He’s not wrong.

Baine considers it.

“I will try,” he says slowly, and smiles at Anduin’s little cheer. “But I make no promises.”

“Who’s footing the repair bills?” Liam asks darkly, and the sound of a soft punch makes its way down the call. “Hey!”

From there on they dissolve into mindlessness, but Baine tunes them out. He has to figure out how to tank on a retribution paladin.

Won’t this be fun?

 

* * *

 

It actually is really fun.

They’re doing awfully, of course, but they’ve somehow fumbled their way through the first few bosses and so far it’s turned out a lot better than the Incident.

Wrathion has taken to his job of add control like a duck to water. Baine suspects Anduin intentionally planned it that way to keep him out of his hair.

Left and Right are both micced, although they don’t have cameras. Wrathion’s still on radio silence. He has agreed to join the call, even if he can’t speak or interact, but it saves them from having to type out every other instruction. It’s quite amusing to scroll through the text chat; it looks like Wrathion is just randomly blurting out words.

Baine can tell that Anduin feels better than last week, apparently having become used to the idea that Wrathion’s not going to do what he says regardless of the obvious sensibility. Wrathion just does his own thing. Baine doesn’t really care. It seems to work.

“Wrathion, the quicker you move out of the fire the less health you lose, you know that, right?” Anduin asks eventually, and Baine isn’t sure how he makes keysmashing sound reproachful, but he does. It’s kind of adorable.

“He’s not listening, Sparkles,” Lorna says amusedly.

Anduin sighs and keeps healing, and Baine can just imagine the face he’s pulling.

Wrathion: It would probably be a faster fight if you split into two groups, your highness. One behind Pol and the other behind Phemos.

Wrathion has already picked up the ‘Anduin is a Disney Prince’ inside joke, and has taken it to new heights. It clearly annoys Anduin mildly, but until he himself says that he wants it to stop, Baine is reluctant to step in. It’s not done maliciously. Wrathion does appear to have a rather genuine soft spot for Anduin.

“If the group splits up then I can’t see what’s going on and keep everyone within my AoEs,” Anduin explains. “Especially with the area damage from the weapons and fires.”

Wrathion: Perhaps you should trust Tess to do her job.

There’s a chorus of ‘ooohhhhhh’s, and Tess nearly dies laughing, but Baine can tell that the remark might have been a little too accurate. Anduin had told him over a Skype chat the other night that he was worried that he might disappoint the team, and that Wrathion would only serve to hasten that on. Having a spanner thrown into the works like that would set anyone off balance, and while Anduin was good at adapting, he was only human.

“That’s enough,” Baine breaks in mildly. “Wrathion, we will try your method next week. Anduin, you do not have to take responsibility for all of the healing, that is why we have Tess and Dezco here. Let’s focus on getting through this.”

The rest of the fight continues with Wrathion remaining silent, and Anduin’s voice still sounds discomfited as he relays instructions.

Ko’ragh goes much in a similar vein. The Dweeb Team expect it this time, though, and it loses some of its poignancy.

Anduin doesn’t seem comforted.

“Wrathion, I need to know if you’re going to decide to jump into the Nullification zone! It does a lot of damage and I need to drop spells on you before you go in,” he insists, as Wrathion – apparently randomly – leaps onto the rune.

Wrathion doesn’t even dignify that with a response. He just chugs a healing potion and jumps back in to take care of adds again.

It’s nearing midnight by the time they finish, and Anduin lets out a large yawn. “Alright, guys, nice work! Much better than last time!”

“No wipes!” Aerin says gleefully.

“Exactly,” Anduin smiles widely. “Same again next Tuesday, but we’ll try Wrathion’s strategies. Wrathion, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like it if you could at least get a mic? It’ll be much easier to follow instructions if we can get them faster.”

There’s a pause, before Wrathion agrees. Baine wonders at the hesitancy.

Anduin drops the call soon after, and worried, Baine follows suit.

Baine Bloodhoof: Can I call you?

Anduin Wrynn: Go ahead.

Baine switches on his camera and asks for a video call.

Anduin appears on the screen, three textbooks propping up his chin and his eyebrows raised. “Something the matter?”

 “I was going to ask you,” he replies.

“Is this going to be a weekly thing, because while I appreciate it, I’d really like to actually get some sleep once in a while.”

Baine rolls his eyes and shifts in his seat, getting himself comfortable. Anduin has music playing somewhere in the background; quiet, melodic stuff, likely from his laptop.

“Wrathion has some good ideas,” he observes.

Anduin shrugs. “They seem alright. I guess we’ll find out next week.”

Baine doesn’t say anything. Sometimes a silence speaks for itself.

All throughout that week, he and Anduin had been having little calls. He had only told Tess about the one last Tuesday, but Anduin had periodically called him every other day to ask him what seemed to be a series of unrelated questions. Sometimes he asked about studying. Other times he asked about culture. He’d even asked if Baine knew anyone who did LGBT studies – that had been an interesting discussion. Each time, Baine had sat down with a mug of tea (his grandmother’s recipe) and they had set aside that time to simply talk.

He had learnt over the few years they’d known each other that Anduin didn’t like silences when he had thoughts on his mind. He would leap to fill them, sometimes with his own speech, other times with music or a movie. That was how Baine knew Anduin had a problem he was trying to work out.

The faint strains of a flute filter through his speakers.

“How do you tell someone politely that they’re being a jerk? Without offending them?”

Baine hums. He does that a lot. “I would raise the issue in question and remind them that they should consider how their words affect others. Words are like arrows – after you let them fly, there is no taking them back.”

Anduin huffs out a chuckle, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms and pushing aside the textbooks. “That’s true enough.”

“Have you spoken with your aunt recently?” Baine asks, changing the topic. “I saw her the other day, in the city. She seemed tired.”

Anduin nods. “Yeah, she’s had a tough time recently. One of her competitors really messed her firm over. She hasn’t had time to call me much, but Dad’s spoken with her.”

“He’s well?”

“He is. He wants me to visit him these holidays.”

“Will you?”

Anduin bites his lip thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. New York’s a long flight from London. Will you be around?”

“If you are,” Baine says with a smile, “then I will always make time.”

 

* * *

 

Baine has a #TeamDad mug that he uses for tea.

Only tea. Coffee does not under any circumstances get put into the #TeamDad mug. This is not because of any moral principles or tastes – it simply doesn’t fit under the coffee machine. Baine isn’t sure how Tess found one this large, but he’s a big guy; it takes a lot of tea to keep him satisfied.

The mug makes its appearance every other video chat, because it’s a good mug and it keeps tea warm enough when he’s sitting in front of the computer.

“Baine,” Aerin asks, when they’re practicing his tanking one afternoon, “I’ve a question.”

“Yes?”

“Ye know how they say in every friendship group there’s a mum friend?”

A sigh. “Yes?”

“I think you’re the mum friend. Or the dad friend, really. D’ye think you’re up to the responsibility?”

Baine doesn’t think there’s much responsibility involved in being the dad friend. All he ever really does is sit there while the others talk, and then prod them in the direction of the object of their problems. It’s quite therapeutic, in a way. “You’ve been talking to Anduin, haven’t you?”

“Yep.” She dumps the aggro on him and slams down a healing potion or five. “Tells me that you’re the person to go to fer advice.”

Baine rubs his forehead and shrugs. “I suppose. What advice were you looking for?”

“In your wise opinion,” she says, “what’s the best way to matchmake someone?”

See, Baine likes his mug. He’s very fond of his mug.  Which is why he feels like a part of his soul has been ripped away when he drops it, tea and all, and it smashes on the ground beneath his feet.

“Oops.” Aerin pauses. “Was that yer mug?”

“Yes,” he says miserably.

“Sorry. Tess’ll get ye a new one.”

He goes off to find a broom.

When he’s had a long enough period of mourning for his mug – he’s already missing it, this small cat one is just not the same – he sits back down and remembers what Aerin was asking him in the first place.

“Why are you asking me about matchmaking?”

“Curiousity,” she lies blatantly. “Also Tess told me to.”

That… does sound like something Tess would do, actually. She’s a devious kid, is their Tess.

Not that Baine has any idea exactly how old she is, but he still thinks of her as a kid. What can he say? He’s the dad friend.

Sometimes he even has the urge to start projects and never finish them.

“Who are we matchmaking?”

“Tess didn’t say.” Another blatant lie. Aerin’s not even trying; she sounds like she’s actually finding it hilarious.

“I would make sure that they both like each other to begin with,” Baine says slowly, an idea taking root. “Then I would see if that enjoyment could translate to romantic attraction. Then, I suppose it is a matter of finding the best situations for them to impress and be impressed by each other.”

Aerin laughs wickedly. “Ye sound like you’ve done this before.”

Baine shrugs. “I have seen enough romantic comedies to know the way these things turn out.”

That stops the conversation dead in its tracks. Baine continues on beating away at the arakkoa, mournfully glancing down at the shards of his mug. It will take him a long time to come to terms with the devastating loss that he has suffered today.

“You’ve seen _rom-coms?”_ Aerin asks, her tone awed.

“Yes.”

There’s another few heartbeats of stunned silence while Aerin digests that information.

“And did you _like_ them?”

“They were decent enough. I found the lack of variation boring after a time.”

More silence. He switches targets and tries a different rotation.

“How are you even real?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in other news, i really like dialogue
> 
> dear whoever asked about this on anon: voilà. je vous en prie.


	3. Teamspeak/Ventrilo/Skype

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Right is a pun loving asshole

Wrathion does not do voice calls.

Right found this out the hard way, which was Left sending her various iterations on the phrase ‘NO’ until she dropped the topic.

Eventually, Wrathion had initiated a video call, and Right immediately knew why.

Wrathion hasn’t done vocal coaching.

“Right?” he says impatiently, and she snaps out of her thoughts. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

Wrathion runs an elaborate operation that involves a lot of money changing hands and transferring said money across factions. That’s what he needs Left and Right for. He sells recipes and materials across factions too, kind of like the auction house, except he also runs a side service of being the middleman in gold transfers. A tailored auction house, he calls it, for the very rich.

Right’s about 83% certain that he’s an economics major.

“Yeah, sure, hold on,” she says, draining her coffee. It’s late, too late, but she’s been talking to this guy about a money transfer for nearly two hours and she’s not about to give up now. He’s switching a lot of gold across – nearly 70k – and she’s haggling for their cut.

Left speaks. “You don’t have to do the call if you don’t want. Casual raiding is a thing.”

“I can do it!” Wrathion protests immediately. Sometimes she wonders exactly how old he is. “Anduin asked me to.”

At this point, Left and Right don’t even need to look at each other to share a knowing glance. They have developed their own form of telepathy, and right now they are giving each other incredibly deadpan looks.

Wrathion has literally not stopped talking about Anduin, or mentioning Anduin, or referring to Anduin, in the last two weeks. At first, it was cute; Right has never seen him so interested in anyone before, apart from their clients and his professors, and listening to him chatter about the boy was cute. Now, it’s becoming almost like a routine gag. Wrathion will be presented with a topic of conversation that has nothing to do with Anduin, and somehow it will immediately wind its way back to him.

Right finds it hysterical.

Left wants to forget about everything and have done.

“It will be fine,” he continues, almost to himself. “They seem like nice people. Lorna’s a good customer. (“Of course that’s what you’d prioritise,” Left mutters.) It won’t be a problem.”

Right wraps up her conversation with Mr. Filthy Rich and flips her attention back to Wrathion and Left.

“I’m done.”

“Good,” Wrathion says. “You’ve been talking to Anduin’s guild?”

Right has indeed. She has decided that her two favourites are Aerin (because Aerin takes no shit and is actually good at her job) and Dezco (mostly for the same reasons). “ _Ouais_.”

“What have you told them?”

“That they should trust you because even if you are totally annoying, you know what you’re doing.”

Wrathion sighs, not even bothering to argue with her; which is good, because it would be a waste of effort because she is always right.

Pun _completely_ intended.

“Okay,” he says eventually. “I can do this.”

Right has no doubt in that.

 

* * *

 

Chronologically, Wrathion’s state of mind develops as follows:

Wednesday: determined and confident. He seems to be talking with Anduin on Guild Chat a lot.

Thursday: first signs of doubt. Drinks half a pot of coffee as if that will make his voice deeper.

Friday: anxiety. Left spends an hour reassuring him.

Saturday: denial, but productive denial. He talks to himself a lot and has Right practice conversations with him.

Sunday: Right takes the day off. Wrathion still texts her and asks if she knows how Anduin feels about the LGBT community. Right turns her phone off.

Monday: Left chews her out for turning her phone off. Wrathion is no longer nervous and instead mutters to himself occasionally.

 

* * *

 

Tuesday night rolls around. Right had told Wrathion that it might be a good idea to test the waters but n _o_ o _o_ o _o,_ he’d be p _e_ r _f_ e _c_ t _l_ y fine on the night.

He isn’t. Right is always right.

“You know what, Anduin can stuff it. I’ll just type,” he says.

“You can’t type that fast,” Left says helpfully.

“Don’t be gauche.” Right taps her own mic. “Wrathion, you’ve been talking to us for months. I think you can talk to these guys.”

A little box pops up. [Anduin has invited you to the group].

Wrathion heaves a sigh and invites everyone else to the Skype call.

They pop in, a varied mess of chatter and laughter and chip packets rustling. Lorna is flirting with Tess. Aerin is swearing. Someone opens a can of soda.

“Alright guys, settle down,” Anduin says, laughing. “Wrathion’s in charge, tonight, as I’m sure you’ve all been gossiping about for the last week.”

“Actually, we’ve been talking about Baine’s mug,” supplies Aerin helpfully. Baine lets out a sob.

“A tragic affair,” Anduin sounds sympathetic, “but we need to focus. Wrathion’s going to be having us do a few more complicated strategies than tank and spank, I suspect. Wrathion?”

Right hears him take a fortifying breath.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m here.”

He pauses, as if waiting for a reaction. There isn’t any. Like, at all. Even Right is a bit surprised. All she can hear is someone fighting with a packet of chips, and Lorna playing that stupid bubble game with the popping noises. She knows it’s Lorna. Lorna has a certain aesthetic.

“Um.” Wrathion hesitates. He was probably all psyched up for a huge PowerPoint presentation on being trans and is a little confused as to what to do now. “Is everyone here?”

A chorus of affirmative noises.

“Alright. Now for Kargath, this is what we’re going to do…”

 

* * *

 

It works.

Obviously, Right knew it would, but they don’t wipe once and Wrathion only dies because Anduin ‘forgot’ to heal him at one point. To be fair, Wrathion _had_ been acting very needle-y and not as polite as he could have been, and Tess rezzed him immediately after, but still.

Anyway, Wrathion’s strategies work, even if it does make Anduin and Tess’ lives a lot harder. They split into smaller groups, a healer each, and come together seemingly randomly. He emphasises burst damage. Lorna and Liam are encouraged to shepherd the groups in AoE spots. Lots of little things Anduin doesn’t ask of them.

Right knows where Wrathion’s getting the ideas from. The guild hasn’t caught on yet.

 “That wasn’t completely terrible,” Liam says, the first to switch on his camera. “Thanks, Wrathion.”

“Ye just like not having to pay repair bills,” Aerin says slyly. Right _likes_ Aerin.

Liam shrugs unashamedly. “I’ve finally got my iLevel up to Mythic standard. Shit’s expensive.”

Tess and Lorna flick their monitors on at the same time. Oh, that explains it – they’re at Tess’ house. Right knows that it’s Tess’ because she can actually see the opposing wall. Liam immediately goes off on a tangent about ‘corrupting the innocent’ and ‘taking advantage of my baby sister’, and Lorna flips him off.

Baine, Dezco, Aerin; Anduin turns his on last and brushes his hair out of his eyes. “Thanks, Wrathion,” he says, and he means it. “That worked really well.”

He clams up after that. They both do, really, and Right almost starts laughing aloud until Wrathion finally breaks.

“Alright, I have to ask – why didn’t any of you ask about my voice?”

“Not our business,” Dezco says. “You didn’t make it a big deal so we didn’t either.”

“And anyway,” Tess pipes up, smiling brilliantly, “it’s not like you’re the only LGBT person here. I’m trans, too.”

“Gay as a rainbow,” Lorna says.

“I’m aromantic,” Aerin says.

“Two-spirit,” Baine says.

“I’m ace,” Anduin says.

“And I’m the ally that the A stands f – ow, Andy!”

There comes laughter from that end of the line.

“So no,” Baine says serenely over the ruckus that Anduin and Liam are making, “we didn’t ask. We care about your identity and we’ll respect it no matter what it is. You have rights.”

“Just one, actually,” Right says.

There’s a conspicuous silence from Wrathion.

Left and Right look at each other – literally, this time, because unlike Wrathion they are perfectly happy to turn their cameras on with the guild – and immediately open up another group chat for the three of them.

Elsie Droite (Right): hey you okay?

Marjani Kushoto (Left): we can tell them to talk about something else

Wrathion: I am fine. I just need to take a moment. Go back to talking.

Right shrugs, and accepts that Wrathion knows himself better than they do and her hounding him is not going to help matters. At all. He doesn’t respond well to pressure unless it’s pressure from himself.

Which, when she thinks about it, is probably not a good thing.

Anduin and Wrathion don’t speak to each other after that. Right is absolutely certain that it has nothing to do with Wrathion’s gender or lack thereof, but of the sudden switch in authority and Wrathion’s evident capability. Anduin may be a Disney Prince, but that doesn’t mean he’s perfect.

Wrathion hasn’t made it easy, either. Right would be the first to acknowledge that Wrathion leans more towards ‘act like a smug asshole’ than ‘graciously assume authority’.

There is also a ridiculous amount of miscommunication there, too. Each time Wrathion explained a new strategy, he’d tack on an ‘if that’s alright with you, your highness’ to the end. Anduin took this as mockery, Wrathion said it for affirmation. Wrathion would consistently acknowledge the tanks and DPS, but make no mention of the healers. Anduin took this as condescension, Wrathion did it out of anxiety. In turn, Anduin would spend more time healing the rest of the party, often leaving Wrathion with low HP. Wrathion took this as dislike, Anduin did it out of trust in Wrathion’s abilities.

The list goes on.

She pulls a hair tie from her wrist and loops her hair up into a bun.

She opens up yet another chat with Left.

Elsie Droite (Right): we should have them do something other than raids. the awkwardness kills me

Marjani Kushoto (Left): like what?

Marjani Kushoto (Left): rp? pvp? dont be stupid.

Marjani Kushoto (Left): can you imagine tess and anduin in pvp

Right _does_ laugh aloud at that, but thankfully it appears that Lorna has just cracked a joke, so she is saved having to explain herself.

Actually. Right stops. Maybe –

Marjani Kushoto (Left): you stop right there

Elsie Droite (Right): eyyyyyy

Left groans, and flips off her camera. Right knows she’s still there, though. Left may be all high and mighty, but she’s as crooked as a corkscrew and twice as slippery. She’ll _love_ this.

“Hey,” Right says, interrupting the guild’s mindless after-raid chatter. “Any of you up for some PvP?”

Lorna and Baine leap onto that within seconds, and soon enough they’ve convinced the entire guild that it is totally in their best interests to hop onto their best PvP characters and have a go at each other. Which Right totally agrees with, if only for the hilarity.

Wrathion coughs. “Your highness, are you sure you want to do this?”

Anduin blinks. “What? I haven’t done it in a while, but I’m sure I still can.”

There’s an obligatory round of hem hems and muffled ‘TMI’s, and Anduin rolls his eyes.

“I just don’t want you to end up paying several hundred gold in repair bills,” Wrathion says, sincere as a politician.

Anduin’s eyes narrow. He leans his face on one hand and eyes his screen with something close to a challenge. “We’ll see.”

Left, Dezco, and Baine all ditch them for their Horde characters, on the off chance that they get the same battleground; it’s nearing one in the morning, the odds aren’t that bad. Left and Right have an uncanny ability to get the same battlegrounds anyway, so luck is on their side.

The loading screen pops up. It’s Arathi Basin. Oh, this is going to be fantastic.

 

* * *

 

“Anduin, where the fuck did that come from?”

It’s four am. Lorna and Aerin have both bailed, citing jobs that have morning shifts. It’s barely midnight for Baine and Dezco, so they’re still going strong. Right is flagging. She can feel it.

A few of them had been predictably average. Tess was awful, but she tried. Aerin was good at finding people and hitting them, but not so good at everything else. Dezco was smack bang in the middle of the total damage count (or so Left told her).

Right slams down another espresso.

Wrathion was PvP specced. That was what he did when he wasn’t making money off lazy players with too much money on one faction. Naturally, he climbed to the top of the charts very quickly and stayed there throughout.

Left and Right spent most of the time chasing after each other and then stealthing.

But Anduin had surprised the lot of them. It had become evident when Right had followed him up to the lumber mill, intending to rely on his healing, that he had Shadow as an off-spec.

He was one of those assholes that mind controlled people off the cliff.

She _likes_ him.

“I like PvP, sometimes,” Anduin says. He’s base camping; they’re in Eye of the Storm now. “Just not often.”

Wrathion pops up next to the two of them. Ever since the little MC incident, Right has stuck close to Anduin, and it appears Wrathion is getting jealous. Right thinks it’s adorable.

“But you’re – ”

“If you say the words ‘Disney’ or ‘prince’ I will completely withdraw everyone’s guild repairs.”

Wrathion wisely shuts up.

“Okay but seriously where is this coming from,” Liam asks.

Dezco rushes up and Anduin wastes no time sending him off the other side of the Mage Tower. “Stress relief?”

Wrathion makes a thoughtful humming sound. Right would bet real, actual money that he is restructuring his entire mental model of Anduin Wrynn.

She notices shortly after that he begins targeting players who have targeted Anduin.

She and Left have raised a vengeful psychopath. She wipes away a tear.

“Oh!” Tess says suddenly. “This makes sense!”

“Something the matter?” Baine asks.

“It’s Wrathion,” she explains. “The reason why his strategies are weird. It’s because he plays like someone who does PvP, not raiding.”

There’s a moment of silence in which everyone digests this revelation.

“Huh,” Anduin says. “You know, that actually makes sense. No wonder you’re so hard to heal.”

“Excuse me!” Right has never heard Wrathion sound so affronted. “I – ”

“ANYWAY,” she interrupts, changing the subject adroitly (ehehehe), “now that we all understand each other a little better, let’s all be friends and keep our guild repairs and respect each other’s strategies. Yes? Good.”

They ease out of the battlegrounds after that. Wrathion seems to be completely losing his mind – which Right allows, because it’s essentially a role reversal of what he did to Anduin – and Anduin is snickering uncontrollably. Liam has fallen asleep and is snoring. Tess _still_ looks fresh as a daisy, which Right is intensely jealous of because her own hair looks like a dandelion.

Baine and Dezco say goodnight and log out.

Wrathion and Anduin are bickering quietly in the background, serving almost the same job as muzak except less annoying. Left is back on her gnome – which, for the record, was Right’s idea – and they are still merrily duelling away.

They’re perfectly evenly matched, which drives Left crazy and Right dies of laughter every time.

Soon after, Tess drops out, telling them earnestly that she has morning classes and she shouldn’t even have stayed up this late. Right has no idea what Tess is studying. It’s probably something creepy and morbid like forensic psych. Tess seems like the type with darker interests. No one can possibly be that nice.

“I’m going to – ” Anduin yawns hugely. “Oh, sorry. I’m going to go to sleep now. Liam’s drooling. Will I see you tomorrow?”

This is posed as an open question.

It’s completely directed at Wrathion and Right was not born yesterday.

“Yes,” Wrathion says quickly. “At least, you’ll hear me. My camera isn’t working.”

_LIES!_ Right thinks, because Wrathion is a lying liar who lies. His camera is working fine. He probably doesn’t want Anduin to see him with bedhead.

Then she remembers that he wears a turban. Not bedhead then. Is bed turban a thing? Does he wear his turban to bed? She has never asked the important questions, and makes a little reminder on a sticky note to ask him sometime. He’s had weirder questions from her and he certainly won’t think it out of the ordinary.

Anduin hangs around for another minute, seemingly reluctant to actually press the [Exit Now] button, but when he does leave, Wrathion follows him.

“Guess it’s just us left,” Right says, smirking.

Left disconnects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy my headcanons because they are here to stay


	4. Operation: Wranduin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tess is very lovely and also very devious

“My friends, we are gathered here today – ”

“Tess, don’t imitate a funeral. That’s really bad taste.”

Tess blinks at Lorna, then is forced to admit that she has a point. Baine looks like he’s about to cry. “Oh, of course, I’m so sorry. Good members of the Tuesday Group, we have a new mission on our hands.”

‘Mission’ is, perhaps, not the right word, but Tess can’t think of anything better and it does have a nice ring to it. It makes them sound cool, and not like a bunch nerds who take video games a bit too seriously. Not including Lorna, because Tess loves her dearly but she is not the epitome of gravitas and decorum.

“Is this about you and Lorna, because Liam looks like he’s about to blow a gasket,” Dezco observes mildly.

Liam can stuff it. Tess hopes he does blow a gasket one of these days, because then he can quit it with the protective big brother shtick and get back to actually being a nice person to be around.

“This is about Anduin and Wrathion.”

A collective ‘ooohhhhh’ echoes around the group. Lorna sounds disappointed. She probably wanted to rile Liam up.

“Right, you’ve told me that Wrathion seems to be talking about Anduin a lot?” Tess asks more than states, looking towards her.

Right nods, hair bouncing. “It’s almost all he talks about.”

“And do you think he’s… romantically interested, would you say?”

“Oh, yeah,” Left drawls with a groan. She sounds completely and utterly fed up, and Right snickers.

Tess smiles indulgently. Anduin has been almost as insufferable, as far as Anduin ever gets insufferable.

“I propose, then,” she says, “that as their best friends, we do our best to make sure that this beautiful little friendship blossoms into romance.”

“So we matchmake them,” Aerin said.

“Yes. Basically.”

There’s a silence.

Liam and Lorna are murmuring to each other. Dezco looks tired and put upon. Right is snickering and sharing glances with Aerin.

It seems positive, at least.

“I don’t see why not…” Left said slowly.

“This is going to end terribly.” Liam is his usual, charming self.

Baine nods regally, and says, “I give my blessing.”

And that is that.

* * *

The plan is as follows:

Step One: Ensure that they are actually romantically interested in each other.

Step Two: Have them admit said interest to a third party. (“Lock them in a room together!” “Thanks, Aerin, I’ll keep that in mind next time they’re _on the same continent!_ ”)

Step Three: Put them in a wide variety of situations that make them seem far cooler than they actually are.

Step Four: ???

Step Five: Profit.

It is not, Tess thinks, a very good plan.

But when you are trying to matchmake the two _actual_ planners in the group, there are certain limitations.

* * *

Lorna told Tess three days ago that she’d take her out for coffee, but as usual, Lorna has forgotten or been distracted by political debates.

Tess actually is very fond of Lorna’s revolutionary streak. It only ever pops up around British politicians, and recent government choices have set her off again. Tess thinks she’s meeting with a social activism group, but she’s not sure, because she’s sitting alone in a coffee shop staring at her phone.

“You know,” Anduin says, coming forward and unwinding his scarf, “you could call her, not me, if she’s who you wanted to spend the afternoon with.”

Tess jumps up and drops her phone on the chair, engulfing Anduin in a hug. “Don’t be silly! She’s busy, and you’re not, and it’s been ages since I’ve seen you!”

She holds him out at arms length and beams at him.

He’s wearing a new pea coat she doesn’t recognise in a gentle shade of blue, and his hair is messy from the wind. She straightens it and gestures him into a chair.

The barista glances between them when she goes up to get Anduin a latte. She’s not surprised – she’s dressed up, and Anduin’s just permanently put together.

The barista doesn’t ask, though, and she’s grateful.

“So,” she says, sitting down again and crossing her legs at the ankles. “How are you?”

He grins, and although he has faint bags under his eyes, he seems happy and full of energy. “I’m actually really good. It’s been – nice. Everything’s nice.”

She smiles genuinely, his happiness infectious. “I’m glad. Any plans for the weekend?”

He hesitates. That means he wants to lie but isn’t sure that he has a good enough reason to. Tess knows this because Anduin is very predictable and also a bad liar.

“No,” he says. “I don’t.”

He fiddles with his sleeve. That means he doesn’t, but he wants to make plans with someone else and doesn’t want to hurt Tess’ feelings. Tess sips her coffee and smiles. She does like that Anduin cares, because it’s reciprocated.

She changes the subject. “So, how was your week?”

It dissolves into chatter. Slowly, the tide of conversation turns to their friends – more specifically, to Wrathion, because Anduin is transparent.

“Say, Tess…” He pauses. “How do you tell the difference between wanting to be really good friends with someone, and wanting to date them?”

She frowns thoughtfully, popping a biscuit into her mouth. She doesn’t really know how to answer that. “I’m… hmm. I would say wanting to date someone is being friends and wanting to, you know, touch their face or whatever, but…”

That doesn’t really apply in this circumstance. Not for Anduin.

“How do you feel when you talk with them?” she asks, sticking to the neutral pronouns despite knowing full well who he’s talking about.

He shrugs, still fiddling. Anduin has never really shown an interest in people other than friends, and he’s never asked her about something like this. Now that she thinks about it, she does find it hard to tell the two desires apart emotionally, particularly in the case of Lorna. They were friends long before they started dating. It had only really happened because Lorna had looked at her one afternoon and said, ‘D’you want to go on a date or something?’ and… everything had just spiralled.

She smiles fondly.

Anduin starts talking again. “I don’t really know. Whenever they come online the first thing I think of is if they’ll talk to me. I can’t stop refreshing my emails. I get a rush of happiness whenever they so much as type my name. I just…”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees and fringe hiding his face.

“I really like what I have at the moment, and I don’t want to ruin that. Especially if this _is_ just wanting to be really good friends. But at the same time, I don’t want to regret asking him when I had the chance.”

Tess puts her cup down and leans forward too, heart softening. “You should tell them. Even if it’s hard, they should know. Then you can work it out together.”

“But I don’t even know if this is what I want,” he says, looking up to meet her eyes. He does seem honestly upset, and she resists the urge to pull him in for a hug. “What would I get out of it? It’s not like I can see them whenever I want, or hug them, or anything, really. I just…”

He snorts, self-deprecatingly, and shakes his head. “How do you tell someone that you have feelings for them, but you don’t know exactly what feelings they are and whether or not you even want to do anything with them?”

And that, Tess thinks sadly, is the crux of the matter.

She reaches out and puts her hand over his. “The best thing to do is to tell them. I know it’s hard, and it might be awkward, but at least that way you’ll have it off your chest. If they aren’t interested at all, you don’t have to worry about labelling your feelings. If they are, then you can work it out together; maybe you both have the same problem?”

Anduin nods, and looks away, towards the window. It’s beginning to rain, because London is just a bitch like that, and Tess sighs.

She should probably leave. She has a lot of study to do, and she’s been out for long enough.

“It’ll be fine,” she says, standing and giving him a smile. “Either way, we’ll be here – doesn’t matter if it’s to celebrate or feed you ice-cream at three am.”

Anduin laughs, startled, and jumps up. “Of course. Thanks, Tessa.”

She reaches up and pats his cheek, then shrugs on her own coat and wanders out to brave the London autumn.

* * *

Having completed step one, Tess moves onto step two.

“Come on,” she wheedles, “you’re the best person for the job. You’re blunt and rude 90% of the time anyway, he won’t suspect a thing!”

“Tess,” Liam says, “if this is meant to convince me to co-operate, it’s not working.”

Tess gives him her best puppy eyes. “I’ll buy you a dog.”

“I already have a dog.”

“I’ll buy you another one.”

Liam sighs, and rubs his forehead. His beard needs a trim. His beard always needs a trim. Sometimes, and Tess doesn’t tell him this, it looks like a small furry beast has attached itself to his face and is busily trying to make itself at home.

“I’ll do it on one condition.” He gave her a pointed look.

“If you so much as _think_ about Lorna – ”

“What? No!” He shakes his head vigourously, reminding Tess of a dog shaking away water. He scowls, but it’s directed inward.

They’re seated on Liam’s couch. His golden retriever, Woofbite, is sprawled over Tess’s lap and demanding cuddles. Liam has his feet on the coffee table (a gift – Liam is _not_ the kind of person to go shopping for coffee tables) and they’re eating takeaway pizza for dinner.

They would have gotten Chinese but then Lorna would have yelled at them and demanded they invite her over next time if it ever happened again. Lorna likes noodles.

Liam reaches for another slice. “No, I wasn’t going to say anything about Lorna. How petty do you think I am?”

Tess pauses. “Really?”

“Really.” Liam looks a bit perturbed. “I love Lorna. She’s been a sister almost as long as you have – which I try not to think about too much because erk weird. But I dunno. You’re smart, she’s not stupid. You’re good for each other.”

He takes a bite and chews serenely. At least, he probably thinks he’s doing it serenely, but he really just looks mildly constipated. “I just want to make sure she knows that if she fucks up and breaks your heart, I’m gonna fight her.”

Two years ago, Tess would have been genuinely afraid. She would have been checking his fridge for liquor, and pouring his beer down the sink. A year ago, she would be texting Lorna and thinking about calling their father.

Now, she just pushes Woofbite off her lap and slings an arm over Liam’s shoulders.

“Don’t fight her, she’d win.” Lorna’s a police officer. Of course she’d win.

Liam snorts. “But then she’d have to answer to you for beating up your brother _and_ breaking your heart. I can’t lose.”

She headlocks him playfully and they tussle for a bit, until Woofbite leaps up and tries to join in.

“So you’ll do it?” Tess asks eventually, winding down.

Liam blinks. His train of thought appears to have been successfully derailed.

“I had a condition.”

“You did,” she agrees, “but I convinced you otherwise.”

He doesn’t have a response to that. “Fine. I’ll ask him. But if it goes wrong I’m telling him you told me to ask.”

“He won’t believe you,” she says confidently, and kicks her feet up.

* * *

That night she gets a text from Liam. It’s mostly mangled and she’s pretty sure he was typing blindfolded, but she thinks it reads ‘Yep, it’s Wrathion’.

Or something like that. Wrathion does not play nicely with autocorrect.

Suspicions have been confirmed. She mentally sends good vibes towards Liam and turns to step three.

* * *

“Alright, any ideas?”

There is a whiteboard. It’s one of those online ones, but it’s a whiteboard nonetheless, and the Tuesday Group appears to gather the significance of it.

“Romantic situations aren’t my strong point,” Aerin says dryly.

Left, surprisingly, speaks first. “You want flattering situations that will make them appreciate each other.”

Tess rolls that around in her head, and decides that yes, that is very well phrased and she agrees entirely. “Precisely.”

“Mario Kart.”

“You’re an asshole,” Lorna says, but she sounds gleeful. Tess makes a mental note to ask where Left lives and make sure she and Lorna never cross physical paths.

“Unless there’s an online version, I think that’s ruled out,” she says regretfully, “but thanks anyway.”

Ideas are thrown around like superballs. PvP, movie streaming, LFR, private skype calls, the Darkmoon Faire. Dezco starts getting really into it, even going so far as to draw up a timetable and expected date lengths and what they should do as honourable chaperones.

Tess feels a sudden surge of fondness for her friends, ridiculous as they are.

She’s very happy.

Suddenly Lorna screams “RED ALERT!!!”, and within seconds everyone has closed their browsers, left the chat group, and destroyed all evidence of the last three hours. They go from 160 to 0 in less than four seconds.

Wrathion’s little portrait pops up as he signs in.

Tess isn’t sure how Lorna does it, but goddamn, is she glad she does.

“Am I late to something?” Wrathion asks as he joins the newly formed chat. He sounds suspicious, in both senses of the phrase. Then again, Wrathion tends to sound like he’s plotting something, even when he’s only typing in Guild Chat, so Tess could well be biased.

“No,” Liam says, sounding as bored as he usually does. His hunter is bouncing around Tess’s druid. “They’re just arguing about what we should do today.”

“I want to PvP,” Right says.

“You always want to PvP,” Left says.

“We’re not doing PvP,” Aerin says.

Wrathion taps his mic. Tess has noticed that he does that, but she hasn’t figured out whether it’s a nervous thing or an attention-grabbing thing. “Where’s Anduin?”

Transparent. Utterly transparent.

“He’s asleep,” Lorna says. “On top of his books.”

Wait, what?

Lorna chuckles at the various concerned noises the group makes. “No, he’s fine. We were chatting earlier and he fell asleep in the middle of the call.”

“But he’s okay?”

“Just tired. He’s been sleeping weird lately.”

Tess sighs. “So long as he’s actually getting some rest. We should – ”

Wrathion disconnects.

She takes a sip of tea.

* * *

She gets a Skype message the next morning when she’s fumbling with her phone and trying to drag a brush through her hair. Her hair stubbornly refuses to budge. The phone, at least, allows her to use it.

Anduin Wrynn: You wouldn’t have anything to do with Wrathion waking me up at eleven o’clock at night to talk about economics, would you?

Tess Greymane: I have no idea what youre talking about

Anduin Wrynn: Because he did. I got three hours of sleep last night.

Tess Greymane: You dont sound upset about that

Anduin Wrynn: I’m not.

Anduin Wrynn: It was amazing.

* * *

“Does that count as part of step three done?” Lorna asks.

Tess smiles at the mirror, checking her lipstick, and glances over her shoulder. “I suppose it does. Why?”

Lorna sticks her head through the door. “Left is running a book. I have ten quid riding on three months.”

Tess sighs and moves over to grab her bag.

“What?”

“You’re not supposed to bet against your friends.”

Lorna coughs. “Actually, I’m betting for. Everyone else has five months or higher.”

Tess raises her eyebrows slowly.

“Yup.” Lorna squints at her. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”

She just smiles, kisses Lorna goodbye, and heads off.

If she’s got a red rose in her hair on the next video call, no one mentions it, although she does overhear Lorna and Left whispering in the background. Something about starting another book.

She just whistles cheerily and opens up the game.


	5. Logistics & Strategy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a large amount of stupidity and most of it is Dezco's fault

Dezco is drinking his morning coffee when Tess Skypes him. He made the mistake of bringing his laptop with him on his work trip, and so he is still being hounded by Tess’ relentless quest to set Wrathion and Anduin up with each other. It’s cute, but pointless. He doesn’t say anything. Sometimes it’s best just to let the kids have their fun.

And yes, he can call them the kids, because he is the oldest and for all intents and purposes, the responsible adult. Besides, they’re Baine’s kids. That’s just how it works.

“Dezco!” Aerin hollers, and he groans. They’re all online. This is not going to end well.

“Something wrong?”

“We need you.” Lorna is playing Angry Birds. Dezco hadn’t realised Angry Birds was still a thing. “You’re the only one intimidating enough to convince Wrathion to get his camera working.”

Dezco raises his eyebrows. Slowly. He does it very dramatically, just to get the point across, because this is probably the stupidest idea they’ve thought up yet. Groupthink at its finest.

“You’re the best,” Tess says, a statement of fact, “and Wrathion knows it. If you tell him that you need him to get his cam working, he _will_ do it.”

“I am not threatening a friend.”

Baine coughs meaningfully. “I have to agree with Dezco on this. If Wrathion doesn’t want to use a camera, we shouldn’t force him.”

There’s a buzz of disappointed murmuring, until Liam pipes up. He has his dog sprawled across his lap and peering at the camera. It’s actually rather disturbing.

“Say, Left, does Wrathion not want to use his camera, or does he want to but he’s too scared?”

Left tugs on one of her braids. She’s wearing a blood red bandana that makes her look positively roguish, which Dezco supposes is probably the point. “The second one.”

Liam shrugs meaningfully and bends down to eye his camera. “I think that’s that.”

Dezco sighs, and shuts his laptop.

His day is nice. He goes to his meetings, gets lost twice, talks to his fiancée over lunch, and somehow manages to avoid thinking about his asshole friends for a good seven hours. Australia is unfamiliar and he doesn’t like it – it’s not supposed to be this hot in November.

But that’s what he gets for taking a leadership role.

Baine sends him a few messages over the course of the day, and miraculously only one is about Anduin and Wrathion. Dezco sends him a picture of Jesus in reply.

Yes, he enjoys brainstorming ludicrous ideas that will give Anduin and Wrathion some alone time. No, he doesn’t want that to follow him home. He has Important Things to do and Important People to talk to other than his friends.

One such person being his fiancée, Leza.

“You know,” she says over the phone that night, “you could ask them to stop.”

“I could,” he admits, “but…”

“You think it’s funny.”

“Am I a bad person?”

“Yes.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “You haven’t told them?”

“They already know. At least, some do. It’s… not exactly secret.”

Leza makes a huffing noise, and Dezco hears meowing on the other end of the line. That would be their cats. “Try not to be too negative. I’ll call you tomorrow night. Love you.”

“Love you.”

The minute he puts down the phone and picks up the laptop, he’s regretting it. Baine hits him immediately with a message telling him to run, and because Dezco is a brave, stolid soul, he doesn’t.

It was a pretty stupid decision, when he thinks about it in hindsight.

He declines to join the call. He’s a grown up and he is above letting himself be baited. And he knows he’s being baited, because his friends know him, as much as he sometimes wishes they didn’t. They know that he is grumpy and perpetually tired and has a tendency to go quiet. They _also_ know that if they prod him far enough, he will get very invested in something, and suddenly be the world’s most fervent supporter.

He knows this, and he knows they know this, because that’s how he found himself playing both tank and healer on the same character. He regrets it often.

The current group consists of Aerin, Right, and Tess. Everyone else has Things To Do, which Dezco also does but he is, as evidenced above, stupid.

Elsie Droite (Right): you know it would be easier to just ask them right

Tess Greymane: Probably

Aerin Craig: not as fun, though.

Dezco is literally three centimetres away from exiting the chat window, but then Aerin types;

Aerin Craig: darkmoon faire dates

He groans, and takes the bait.

Dezco Walker: What are you plotting?

Aerin Craig: i’m just saying, darkmoon faire dates are the way to go.

Aerin Craig: if that won’t get him to turn his cam on, what will?

Dezco Walker: Asking nicely.

Elsie Droite (Right): nice one big guy

Dezco puts the laptop down on the hotel bed and goes to turn off the lights. It’s late here, and early there, and he can just _tell_ that he isn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight. Aerin has that effect. You get so used to her bluntness that you don’t see the sneakiness coming until it’s too late.

He is particularly susceptible to it, despite their closer friendship. Or perhaps it’s because of it. Aerin is clever, and he is usually preoccupied. It’s probably not that hard to get him sidetracked.

The fact that his thoughts have gone on a definite tangent only proves it, really.

His phone buzzes three times over night, and each time wakes him, until in the morning he is tired and grumpy and not at all in the mood to be harassed by Aerin over the romantic life of two college kids.

The little Leza voice in his head reminds him that he was once a college kid, but he ignores it, because he was spawned fully grown as a permanently grumpy twenty-seven year old and never experienced anything else. That’s his story and he’s bloody well sticking to it.

Yet, despite the bags under his eyes being a clear indication of ‘please piss off’, Aerin nevertheless gets hold of him and proceeds to talk his ear off.

This is because Dezco is stupid.

There is a repeating motif here. You may have noticed it.

“When’s yer flight?”

“Three in the morning.”

“Great, that gives me – what time is it there?”

“Nine pm.”

“Lovely. Yer sleeping on the plane.”

“I don’t – ”

Aerin barrels on, and Dezco is once again reminded why she’s their main tank. The woman stops for no one. “So, we’ve got Wrathion all nice and buttered up for ye, we just need ye to, y’know, give him a little prod.”

“Buttered up?”

“Darkmoon Faire dates. We’re chaperoning.”

“When did I agree to this?”

“Ye didn’t. I wasn’t askin.”

“There it is.”

He neatly folds his pyjamas (they have golden suns on them because Leza is nothing if not scarily on point) and packs away his toothbrush. It is colour co-ordinated to match his toiletries bag.

“When d’ye get in?”

“Ass o’clock.”

“Fair enough.” The sound of keys clacking and hurried coughing. Aerin’s been caught, it seems. “I gotta go. Text when you get in. Don’t check yer Skype.”

“What’s that supposed t – ” But Aerin’s already hung up, leaving Dezco to make his own choice between dumb (checking his Skype) and dumber (potentially being sidelined by lack of information).

It’s an easy decision.

He groans, and flips open his laptop once again, and regrets every choice he ever made that lead up to this point.

* * *

“Why am I doing this.”

Aerin jumps around him. The dwarf’s red braids bounce up and down at the movement. It’s a cute bit of animation – or it would be, if Dezco found anything cute, which he doesn’t, so ya boo. “Because ye love it.”

“I do not.”

“Ye do.” She leads the way along to the carousel, which Anduin and Wrathion have just vacated in favour of kicking each others’ asses at tonk battles. Dezco can’t see, but judging from previous experience, Wrathion’s probably winning. Anduin’s pretty shit at tonks.

Dezco’s tauren paladin doesn’t really fit on the dragon one, but he tries anyway, because he is secretly an optimist. Just don’t tell Aerin. Or Right. Ever.

“Where’re the rest of the Dweeb Team?” Lorna asks, suddenly coming online. Her hunter comes running up to them in 0.83 seconds flat, and Aerin waves.

“Who knows,” Aerin says, and Lorna hops on the merry-go-round. “Baine’s got work. That’s all I know.”

“Left and Right are doing the flying wings and rings thing,” Dezco says. “Anduin and Wrathion are – they’ve moved onto the human cannon.”

“Of course they have.” Lorna cackles. Her character flexes, and disappears off in the direction of Maxima’s cannon. Dezco is pretty sure she’s going to heckle Anduin, and by association Wrathion, so he chases after her and challenges her to a duel. This is for two reasons: one, Lorna is not competitive but She Must Win, and two, Dezco has yet to lose, to anyone.

He is the best, and don’t you forget it.

“Tess’d get a kick out of this,” Lorna says, because Lorna has a one track mind that mostly revolves around Tess, and occasionally, horses. She was the weird horse girl at college, Dezco can tell. “She’s asleep, though.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re a grown up, aren’t you?” Lorna coughs. “When a mummy and a mummy love each other very much – ”

Dezco shudders, and takes off his headset. Whatever Lorna’s saying, he doesn’t need to hear.

Leza pokes her head over his shoulder. “Say hello to Aerin for me.”

“I won’t.”

She smirks and plants a kiss on his forehead, before plonking down in his lap and hijacking his headset.

“Hello, Aerin, Lorna.”

“Hi Mrs Walker.”

“Hey, Mrs Walker.”

Leza looks a little pleased at that, because she is a university adjunct professor and she likes it when people actually address her respectfully. Dezco shares her pain, but has pointed out before that if she wanted respect, she should’ve gone into primary school teaching.

She flips the headset on speaker, and Dezco sits back, because most often Leza knows what she’s doing more than he does. “What are we doing tonight?”

“We’re being Good Friends,” Aerin says, capitals audible.

“Chaperoning,” Lorna says.

“Oh? Who?”

“Anduin and Wrathion.” Aerin snickers. “They’re like yer cats.”

Dezco bites down a laugh, because he has a reputation to maintain here, and he can’t go ruining it because of an offhand remark.

“Where are they?” Leza runs around in circles for a bit. Tauren were not made for graceful manoeuvres.

The silence is deafening, and at the same time, immensely satisfying in a hyper-stressful kind of way.

“Fu – _fruitcake_.”

“Bugger.”

They have, somehow, managed to lose sight of Anduin and Wrathion. It is – and Dezco doesn’t think he’s too off the money here – just like losing toddlers. Intensely relieving, but at the same time, the most panic inducing, nerve wracking experience known to humanity.

“Get Anduin on the Skype call!” Dezco says.

“Don’t do that!” Lorna says. She’s running around like a headless chook, up and down the main parade of the faire. “Just, can’t you /target?”

Aerin is typing frantically. It sounds like a distress call, possibly to Left and Right, possibly to whatever religious figure Aerin subscribes to. “It’s not workin’!”

Leza mutes their microphone and passes the headset back to Dezco. She’s laughing. Dezco rubs the bridge of his nose, and his lip twitches when she cards a hand through his hair. Their cats, Red and Cloud, wander up to see what the fuss is all about – or, the more likely option, to harass their minions for dinner.

“Don’t stay up to late,” Leza says with another laugh, and Dezco grabs her hand and rubs it as she passes. She returns the gesture fondly, playing with his ring, then wanders off to do Important Leza Things. It probably involves soccer reruns.

Dezco goes back to his friends, and wonders why Baine is never around when you need him.

“They were in the cannon, right?” Lorna asks. “So, just follow the trajectory and I’ll turn on tracking.”

“If they’ve gone into that bloody forest,” Aerin says, “I’m gonna wring Andy’s neck until he _wishes_ Baine’d scold him.”

Dezco just puts his character on follow, and lets them work themselves up.

They make good chaperones. The job is, after all, to turn up and make appropriate faces, then conveniently look the other way so that Anduin and Wrathion can sneak off. Dezco is pretty sure this is true. He doesn’t have another explanation, otherwise, and currently this is all that’s keeping him from leaping into overdrive and Getting Involved.

“We didn’t even get any results for Tess,” Lorna says, marginally despondently.

Aerin whimpers. “She’s gonna give us the look, isn’t she? That disappointed one, and the little smile.”

The two women whine, and Dezco _feels_ their gazes shift to him.

“Oh, no,” he says, knowing exactly where this is going, but Aerin, as observed earlier, is a steamroller.

“Message Anduin,” she says. “Whisper him. Tell him ye found something cool. Get his arse over here.”

“No, no, and no.” Dezco folds his arms, then realises she can’t actually see him because they have their cameras off, and unfolds them. “Do it yourself.”

“But he’ll suspect me,” she points out, reasonably enough. “Ye’re above suspicion.”

“Good.”

“C’mon, d’ye _want_ Tess to give ye the look? She’ll do it. Ye know she will.”

He is truly torn, because on one hand, he doesn’t want to be given the look, but on the other…

“I hate both of you,” he says, and because he is stupid, he clicks open the little whisper box and starts typing.

To [Anduin]: Where are you?

[Anduin] whispers: darkmoon faire, why?

Dezco is pretty sure he can’t answer this without sounding utterly suspicious, so he gives up and doesn’t even bother trying.

To [Anduin]: Specifically. We were chaperoning you and then we stopped paying attention and you disappeared.

He can feel the sigh.

[Anduin] whispers: tess?

To [Anduin]: Tess.

[Anduin] whispers: we’re on the beach. pls don’t disturb.

Dezco, who is, overall, fairly considerate, resigns himself to blatantly lying to his friends.

“He’s not answering,” he says, and Aerin scoffs.

“Alright, alright.” She pauses. “D’we count this as a success, then? When Tess asks?”

Lorna stops in her frantic running, and is silent for a while.

“It’s that,” she says slowly, “or admit that they were doing Romantic Shit and then we lost them.”

They each take a moment to think that over, and by a moment, Dezco means half a second.

“Success.”

“Definitely a success.”

“Absolutely.”

* * *

He has a flight at one pm, because his boss apparently hates him and his lunch, and he’s packing his sun pyjamas when his phone rings.

If it’s Aerin, he’s hanging up on the spot.

It’s Right.

How did Right get his number?

“Dezco Walker,” he says, answering. “How can I help you?”

“You haven’t convinced Wrathion yet,” she says.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been busy. I _do_ have to work, you know.”

“This is more important.”

“What time is it where you are?”

“Doesn’t matter.” That’s Right being a sneaky bugger, because she knows he’s trying to figure out where she lives and she’s not going to make it easy for him. “Hassle him.”

Dezco pinches the bridge of his nose – why is he doing that so often? Never mind, he knows the answer – and caves.

“Fine. Go away.”

He hears her laugh in satisfaction, then hang up. Right confuses him, but he likes it. She’s not predictable like the rest of his friends are, because she’s new and he doesn’t know her as well. And, he thinks, she’s not as similar in temperament to him as Left is.

He and Left have a quite bond of mutual respect, but nothing further.

He checks his watch. It’s an international flight – he’ll need to be there two hours earlier. That gives him a full forty minutes before he’ll really be pushing it.

He opens Skype, and regrets the fact that his stupidity is so well known among his friends that they can take advantage of it this easily.

Dezco Walker: Wrathion? Are you there?

There’s a solid five minutes of no response, then Wrathion responds.

Wrathion: Yes. What’s the matter.

Ah, yes. The infamous ‘I’m harried and busy and this is not a good moment but, because I like you, I will deign to respond’ tone. Dezco knows this tone, because it is his default tone. He respects it, if not its causes.

Dezco: For the next raid, I would appreciate it if you got a camera. 

Dezco: If we want to make our times shorter we need faster communication.

A long pause. Well, longer.

Dezco gets the feeling that Wrathion is either determinedly not thinking about it, or having a small panic attack, and both reactions make him feel guilty. Not, however, guilty enough to disappoint Right.

Wrathion: Very well. 

That’s it. The Skype icon goes white.

He looks up. Red and Cloud have hopped up onto the bed and are nosing him demandingly.

“That wasn’t completely terrible,” he says, and scratches Red’s neck. The tabby purrs and sits on his keyboard.

He wonders if cats are as annoying as children. Then he wonders if children are as annoying as the Tuesday Group, and if so, if they are worth it. He twirls the ring on his finger, and decides, no. He is never having kids if it means dealing with this kind of drama on a daily basis.

His phone buzzes again.

He has learnt his lesson.

He decides, for once in his life, that he is not going to be stupid, and shoves the phone in the bottom of his briefcase where it can’t bother anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINISHED IT NOW ITS HOME FREE


	6. (Application Not Responding)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aerin is a Good Role Model

“I’m not so sure that this is a good idea,” Baine says genially, as Aerin runs around looking for Anduin and Wrathion.

She rolls her eyes – although, of course, Baine can’t see that. “This’s a brilliant idea”

It is, because she thought of it, and everything Aerin thinks of is a great idea. She says this 100% unironically, because it’s true.

Not including that one time she thought it would be good fun to go spelunking with Anduin. That had been a terrible idea. Never doing that again. No sir.

“Ye know,” she says, eventually finding the two kids hanging around near the Wailing Caverns, (What are they doing? Who the fuck goes to the Barrens these days? Please let Wrathion not be the kind to like Chuck Norris jokes.) “we’re practically doing this fer charity.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I don’t even put this much effort inta my _actual_ job.”

Baine laughs, and Liam says something stupid and English that Aerin promptly ignores. Fuckin’ English bastards.

Baine is currently on a level 17 tauren paladin alt that he had rolled for shits and giggles. Its name is Retbull.

The thing is, though, Anduin will always know when any of the Tuesday Group are trying to stalk him, because he always has an eye on their Battletags and is weirdly good at knowing when they’re actually playing, and when they’re following him. It’s useful, sometimes, when Aerin needs to find people because she can just ask Anduin. It’s annoying when she’s trying to spy on him.

But Baine’s alt is on a trial account, which means it isn’t linked to his Battletag, which means Anduin has no idea where he is.

Aerin’s so smart that she sometimes wonders how she does it.

“What are we even doing?” Liam asks.

Aerin clears her throat, but Baine interrupts her, because Baine has a freaky sixth sense for impending arguments, and like a good father, interrupts them immediately. “Making sure that Anduin and Wrathion aren’t doing anything too silly.”

“Anduin wouldn’t know silly if it clocked him round the head.”

“He’s got a point.”

Baine chuckles, and Retbull does a little jump.

Aerin kneels by a nearby briarthorn node and begins harvesting. She’s never bothered with professions before because they are boring and she has no time, but now she needs gold and she may as well get it through auctioning materials. Her repair bills are getting high.

Surprisingly, not from their Tuesday raids. She’s just been doing a lot of falling off cliffs and clicking the wrong buff mid-flight. Aerin plays a warrior, not a mage. She’s got an excuse. It’s in character.

“I see them,” Baine says, and flicks on his camera so that it’s showing his monitor. Aerin disappears off to continue farming.

“Are they doing anything?”

“Are they RPing?” Aerin cackles. “I’d kill to see Wrathion RP. He already sounds pretentious enough.”

Liam laughs at that, because Liam knows that if he doesn’t laugh at Aerin’s jokes, Aerin will find him and axe him where he stands. She learnt how to as a hobby when she was a teenager. She knows her way around a battleaxe.

Aerin likes to cultivate an image of friendly danger.

“So,” she says, popping open a can of root beer and swinging her feet up to perch on her desk, “what’ve ye got to report, Baine?”

“They’re running around killing plainstriders,” he replies dryly.

The next hour or two passes much in the same vein. Baine subtly – or perhaps not, because lets be honest, a tauren named Retbull is never subtle – follows the two around. Aerin watches eagerly, looking for the slightest hint of anything other than two boys going after achievements. Liam bitches. Liam’s English. It’s fate.

Then Anduin’s Skype logo goes green, and all three of them scramble for their hearthstones. Well, Aerin and Liam do. Baine just calmly exits the game and brings up his actual account, because Baine is above all that nonsense.

Wrathion’s goes green a few moments later.

“Andy!” Aerin says cheerfully, and wonders where her hearthstone took her, because she sure as shit doesn’t recognise the inn. “How are ye? Not doing anything stupid?”

“I’m great, thank you. How are you?”

He means it, the creepy bugger.

“Not bad, not bad.” She gets a brainwave. “Did Wrathion get a camera working?”

“He did,” Wrathion grumbles, voice muffled by something. She snickers and takes another sip of root beer. “One moment, please.”

There is an appropriately long and drawn out moment where Wrathion fiddles, Anduin falls asleep on his perennial textbooks, and Liam mutters something to his dog.

Aerin is just about to get up and get a book when Wrathion’s camera switches on. He’s wearing a turban, and his eyes are narrowed. His red shirt makes Aerin think of Star Trek.

“Nice shirt.”

“Thank you.” He looks the faintest bit uncomfortable.

Anduin makes a muffled choking noise, and disappears behind his textbooks. His face is going red.

Aerin coos, before Liam is making cracks about Wrathion’s red shirt status, and Anduin’s camera is subtly redirected. Baine is above it all, and simply watches and gently diverts the conversation when Wrathion begins to look annoyed.

Aerin almost feels bad about making him smash his mug, but Tess got him another one, so it’s all fine.

She shoots off a few teasing messages to Anduin, but he doesn’t respond. When he does pop his head up again, he’s blushing furiously, and refuses to look at the camera. Wrathion’s being shifty too, and it’s all Aerin can do not to phone Tess on the spot. It’s adorable.

“What were you doing?” Wrathion asks, as if he doesn’t know exactly what they were doing. He probably has spies.

“Herb gatherin’.”

“Mhmm.”

She raises an eyebrow at him challengingly, and he leans back, hands coming up defensively. He’s smirking, though. Conniving little shit. If possible, he’s turning out to be even more infuriating in person than he is simply over a voice call.

Aerin likes him.

“You know, if you ever want herbs, I can put you in touch with someone _easily._ ”

“I’m sure ye can,” she says, and he laughs. It’s not a bad laugh. It has Anduin hiding again, so it must be good. “But I’ve got no money ‘cause of all these repair bills.”

Anduin makes a brief appearance to dispute that, but he disappears shortly after, and she can hear Liam frowning in the distance. Yes, she means hear. Liam has a certain noise around him that she can hear all the way over in Glasgow.

Stupid British nonsense.

She logs off shortly after, dropping the Skype call in favour of the telly and half a packet of chips. Korean dramas are about as accurate to her life as they come, and she spends a solid two hours snickering at the sheer soap opera-ness of it all before realising that it would probably be a good idea to go to sleep. At some point. Theoretically.

Her phone is pinging, but it stops after she throws it across the room and buries her head under her pillow. It can wait.

* * *

“What d’ye _mean_ it’s an emergency!?”

“I mean,” says Anduin, “that it’s an _emergency.”_

“You – ” One of her co-workers coughs, and she hastily lowers her voice and ducks down in her chair. “I’m at work!”

“Yes, I know, and I’m really sorry – honestly.”

She groans and grabs her coat, swinging it over her shoulders and putting down her red pen. Those papers aren’t going to grade themselves, but apparently, Anduin is in a Mood and won’t let her do it anyway.

She presses her mobile to her shoulder and makes her excuses to the only other person in the staffroom, one of the Health teachers that she knows by name as Gerald and by rumour as a Massive Bore. He nods, slowly, and it’s rather like watching a slow landslide rumble down. He is a big man. He’s got a red beard. It’s all very Scottish.

There’s a quiet spot in the carpark that’s out of hearing range of just about everyone, so she heads down there and buries her hands in her coat. It’s nearing winter and Glasgow is bloody freezing.

“What is it?” she asks. “Ye couldn’t wait a few hours?”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“Yeah, and?”

“We’re doing Hellfire Citadel for the first time.”

“Get t’ the point, Anduin.”

“Wrathion is distracting!” he blurts out, then lets out a little ‘meep’. Aerin grins wickedly. He’s blushing, she’s sure of it.

“Is he now?”

“What do I do?” he asks hurriedly, whispering. Does he have class? God, Aerin hopes not, that’d be an all time low. Also he would probably get shot.

“Act natural. Be the regular Disney Prince we know ye are.”

“Aerin!”

She laughs and leans against the concrete wall. “What?”

There’s the sound of books shuffling, then a bell ringing, and a wash of voices. A coffee shop. He’s gone into a coffee shop. Anduin only ever goes into coffee shops if he’s meeting someone. Who?

“I need you to help me. You’re practical. What do I do?”

“Don’t do the hideaway thing like you did yesterday.”

She snorts as Anduin lets out an indignant huff. He settles down in a chair – she hears the cushions crunch, noisy things – and sighs again. Is he going to be doing a lot of sighing? She’s too aro for sighing.

“He got a camera.”

“Yup.”

Anduin sighs again, and Aerin hangs up.

He calls again ten seconds later, and while she may be a shitty friend, she’s a good person, so she picks up.

“Sorry.”

“Ye’re pathetic.”

“I’m the worst.”

There’s a clinking of a cup, and he sighs again, but this time it’s despondent. Aerin lets him have his moment. She fumbles in her pocket and lights a cigarette.

“You’re still smoking.”

“Don’t guilt trip me, kiddo. I’m quittin’. Slowly.” She blows a little smoke ring, and Anduin remains silent. “What’s on yer mind?”

A long pause. China clinks and the bell rings several times. Aerin gets herself settled against the cold wall and shuts her eyes, letting the cold wind turn her cheeks red.

“He’s got a camera.”

“Yeah.”

“And now I can talk to him.”

“Ye were talking to him before, ye know. A lot. It was disgusting.”

Anduin makes frustrated noise, and Aerin laughs. “Yes, alright. But now it’s different.”

“Because he’s got a face?” She huffs out a breath of smoke and taps away the ash. “Ye’re fine. He’s wrapped around yer pinkie, anyway. Just don’t try to play it cool. Ye’re shit at that.”

“Thanks, Aerin.” His voice is dry, and she smiles. “I can always count on you for good advice.”

“If ye think this is going to make me forgive ye for all those repairs – ”

“Oh, come on!”

She laughs wickedly and hangs up, just as the bell for the next period rings. She’s got to teach some idiot kids P.E.

* * *

The next morning, she wakes up in a cold sweat, aching all over and clutching at her shoulder. There’s rubble and stone on the edges of her vision, until she blinks the nightmare away and buries her head in her pillow.

Her phone still has Skype notifications pinging, because abuse of group chat is unfortunately common. Aerin is not in the mood to put up with memes, not just yet, and certainly not if Anduin is one of the chatterers.

But it’s nearly three am.

She runs a hand over her face and rubs her shoulder, just once more, for good luck. The old injury twinges, and protests slightly at the movement. She hates it and what it represents, but there’s nothing she can do about it any more. Only time can heal it fully, and even then – well. Let’s just say that she’s never making it to the Olympics.

She swings out of bed and pulls a jacket over her pyjama top. She grabs another blanket and drapes it around her shoulders like a cape, because capes make everything better, then collects her phone and goes out to the kitchen to make coffee. It’s too early for coffee, and she’s got to be at school by seven thirty, but honestly, she’s not going back to sleep. She may as well enjoy the dawning hours while actually awake, as opposed to an uncaffeinated zombie.

Emails get checked as she fumbles with the coffee machine. Students asking for extensions. WoW subscription updates. One from Tess about setting up a guild Facebook page. (Which, no. Aerin is not endorsing this idea.) She’s done by the time the triple espresso makes it from the cup to her stomach.

That wakes her up pretty sharpish, and she flips open Skype, joining the call on the off chance that there’s something vaguely interesting going on. Five hours, that’s… 10:30 in New York. She thinks that’s right. Time zones are confusing.

“ – but, I mean, if you wanted to then I’d be okay with that.”

“If you’re certain.”

“I’m – wait, Aerin?”

She groans aloud and makes _some_ kind of noise in the general direction of the phone. “Anduin? Why are ye awake?”

She checks the clock. Yeah, no, three thirty is not okay. It’s bordering on four now, good lord.

There’s a lot of shuffling, and she’s too tired to figure out what’s going on, so she just waits patiently for Anduin to rearrange himself, his priorities, and quite possibly his life, before he responds.

“I was talking to Wrathion, I just lost track of time. Is it four? I didn’t realise. I’ll be going to sleep now. Good night, both of you, sleep well, I’m – ”

And then he hangs up, and Aerin stares at her screen for a long minute before sighing through her nose and questioning Wrathion.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” Wrathion sounds smug. Well, more smug than usual, but that’s a pretty high bar to beat. “It’s only eleven here, you can’t tell me to go to bed.”

“Yeah, alright, bud. What were ye doing?”

“Talking.”

“Of course ye were. Dafties. Ye’re still on group chat.”

“There wasn’t anyone online, and it’s not like we were discussing anything that no one else could hear.”

She narrows her eyes at her phone, despite the fact that Wrathion can’t possibly see her. He sounds confident, and strangely genuine, like he firmly believes whatever he’s saying. Like he isn’t lying, or hiding anything, because he doesn’t need to. He’s probably not bullshitting, then.

“How old are ye, anyway?”

She hears Wrathion do a double take, nonplussed, before he answers, “Nineteen. Why? Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“Nah. It’s a bit weird, but it’s not like Andy isn’t a little tyke himself.”

“Charming.”

“I teach kids a year younger than you, though, so don’t think I don’t know yer type.”

“And how old are you, then?”

“Twenty-five. Respect yer elders.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Why the sudden interest?”

Aerin buries herself back down into her blanket cape, and hums. “Just figurin’ stuff out. Ye act like a kid.”

“Excuse me!”

“What?” She snorts. “It’s true. Don’t be a twit.”

Wrathion huffs, then laughs slightly. It’s a nice laugh, Aerin notices again. When he isn’t being a pretentious dick he can be quite tolerable. “Alright, very well. Yes, you are correct, I am a ‘kid’.”

Aerin can hear the quotation marks.

She downs the rest of her coffee and resigns herself to a few long hours of alertness and overwhelming exhaustion. So long as it doesn’t involve going back to sleep, she’ll take it. No more nightmares, thank you, Satan.

“You know,” Wrathion says, “we have been raiding for perhaps five months, and yet I barely know anything about you.”

“Not much to know.” She searches around for her book. She’s reading ‘Thud!’ by Terry Pratchett, because she likes dwarves and it has plenty of them. “I like video games. Got a lot of stupid friends. My favourite food is haggis.”

“You aren’t serious.”

“No. Haggis is gross. No one eats that stuff.” She kicks up her feet to rest on the wall and places the phone near her head. “Why’re ye curious?”

“Just that; curiousity. How did you meet?”

“Andy?” she guesses, and Wrathion confirms it. “Met him years ago. He was up in Scotland with his dad – ye’ll love him, ho boy. I did guided tours while I did my degree. Took him through the place, got to know him. Pretty much it. Found out we played the same game a while later and kept up through that.”

Wrathion clicks his tongue and huffs again. He seems to do that a lot; it almost sounds like the way Aerin puffs out smoke rings, but different. She wonders about it. It’s a pretty weird affectation. “He told me a different story.”

“Did he? Weird. Oh well.” She yawns exaggeratedly and stretches. “I gotta get to bed. Go to sleep, young ‘un. Young people these days.”

“Honestly, Aerin.”

“Good night!” She hangs up and throws her phone off to join the mess of jumpers and cardigans and coats strewn across the floor. It can get lost and buried for all she cares. So long as she doesn’t need to go back to a conversation like that again.

She groans, and flips off the lights, and burrows down under her blankets. Maybe if she just stares at the back of her eyelids for a few more hours, she can forget that this morning was ever a thing and just go back in to work as normal.

It is not, of course, until she has to get up to get dressed that she realises that she never asked Wrathion what he and Anduin were talking about. This is because she is stupid.

She whines, downs another espresso, and resolves to harangue them later on that night. It’s sure to work. She’s Aerin Craig, ex-Olympiad in training and axe wielder of incredible skill. If she can’t get two kids to divulge the latest gossip, no one can.

(Alright, yes, Baine can, but he doesn’t count. And besides, he may have a new mug, but she’s still not exactly in his good books.

Might want to send the guy some flowers or something.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you don't love all these losers as much as i do by the end of this then i have failed in my self-appointed mission as leader of the Minor Character Appreciation Squad


	7. End Game.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Liam is not as much of a dick as he could have been.

Anduin’s flat is tiny, because they live in London and therefore _everyone’s_ flats are tiny. London is busy and highly populated and overrated. Liam should know.

He knocks on the door, a few pizza boxes stacked under his arm and Woofbite trailing along behind him obediently. Tess and Lorna are still coming – they had a tea-date-thing that Liam didn’t ask about, because he is not interested in hearing about his baby sister smooching people. No thank you. Not today, Satan.

Anduin calls for him to come in, and Liam opens the door with his elbow and lets Woofbite run in to say hello. The pizzas nearly fall as he trips over a stray shoe, but Liam is graceful and elegant and catches himself on the door.

Because Anduin’s flat is tiny, it always seems like he has more stuff than he actually does. Textbooks are stacked in various corners, and when Liam sets the pizzas down, he sees one of Anduin’s pot plants wilting on the windowsill. He waters it and draws the blind, letting the sunlight come in.

Well. Light, at least. It’s England. There is no such thing as sun in England.

“Hi, Liam,” Anduin says, coming out from his bedroom. “Sorry, I was on the phone with Dad.”

“He’s good?”

“He’s annoying.”

Liam snorts, because it’s true. Maybe it’s a dad thing.

Woofbite patters over to say hello to Anduin, who bends down and immediately starts giving Woofbite the most thorough pat he’s ever received. Woofbite loves it, and Liam takes the opportunity of distraction to steal the first slice of pizza. Losers, weepers and all that.

He searches through the cupboards for mostly clean crockery and then raids Anduin’s fridge for a can of Sprite. There’s a photo of Anduin next to what looks like a cabbage stuck on the front of the fridge, among pictures of his family and friends.

“What’s with the cabbage?”

“It’s a fractal cabbage,” Anduin explains from where he’s still scratching Woofbite. “The algebra prof brought it in and we took selfies with it.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Liam shakes his head, and wonders how even the most normal of his friends is utterly weird.

He sits down on the couch and pulls the tiny coffee table closer with his foot. Anduin’s laptop is lying alone on it, so he opens it and unlocks it.

Anduin drops down next to him. Woofbite, not finished receiving affection, drapes himself over their laps. Thankfully he doesn’t go for Liam’s pizza. Liam loves his dog, but he also loves his pizza, and he’s not sure what he’d do if given the choice.

“Tess and Lorna are going to be late,” Liam says, flipping through Anduin’s movies. “We should eat the pizza before they get here.”

“You’re horrible.”

“Eh, probably.”

Anduin’s Skype dings, and Liam only just sees that it’s Wrathion before Anduin is grabbing the laptop and curling around it like an overprotective dragon.

He types for half a minute, pulling more faces than Liam thinks to count, then sets it back down on Liam’s knees.

“What was that about?”

Anduin shrugs. “Nothing.”

Liam gives him a flat stare, and Anduin shakes his head, going red. “It really was nothing! He just wanted to know when I was free.”

“You going to have a date?” he teases. Since Tess has officially given up on Operation Wranduin, he sees no harm in turning it into an inside joke.

Anduin laughs and leans back, watching with mild interest as Liam returns to scrolling through movies. “Well, it’s a bit difficult, since we’re a few time zones apart, but we’re trying to figure out something that works for both of us, yeah.”

Liam nods.

Then he blinks.

“Wait, what?”

Anduin raises his eyebrows and gives him a curious look. “What?”

“You’re _actually_ trying to set up a date?”

“Yeah…”

Anduin is looking at him like he’s mad. Is he? He doesn’t think so. Anduin’s going on a date with Wrathion? As in, like, a friend thing or a dating thing?

What?

They sit in mutual confused silence.

Woofbite eats Liam’s pizza.

“You’re going on a date with Wrathion.”

“Yes?”

“As in, dating.”

“Obviously.”

“Hold up.” Liam raises a hand and shakes his head, shoving Woofbite off the couch and turning to face Anduin. He takes Anduin’s face in his hands and presses his cheeks together, staring at him. “What do you mean, obviously?”

“Whn people dte they us’lly go on dtes.”

“You and Wrathion are _dating?”_

“Ys? Obvsly?”

Liam shakes Anduin a wee bit, and Anduin endures it good-naturedly. “Since when?!”

“Snce Octber?”

Liam lets out a most undignified shriek and lets go, jerking back and shaking his hands as if he’s been burned. Which he _has_ been, he has been _betrayed_ into an ignoble demise, by his best friend who he thought would ne’er wound him so. To hide such a thing without telling anyone, without telling _him,_ is a scandal!

“I thought you knew,” Anduin says, rubbing his cheeks and giving Liam a perplexed look. “I thought everyone knew.”

“No?!”

“You kept giving us date space, I mean – Baine knows, because I asked him about it and rang him every night for a week straight.” Anduin begins to tick people off on his fingers. “I’m sure Dezco knows, because Baine tells him everything. Also, Dezco’s getting married, I’m pretty sure he’d recognise when two of his friends started dating. Aerin knows because she joined the Skype call one time when we were talking – please don’t bring it up with her, I’m never going to live it down. Left and Right _absolutely_ know, because apparently Wrathion has been ranting to them – or at them, really, he does that – and they’re not completely stupid. That’s, what, half the group? Plus me and Wrathion?”

Liam just stares at him, and then buries his head in his hands.

Anduin rubs his back comfortingly. “Are you alright?”

“No. I have been betrayed.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“I know. I’m going to destroy him.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.”

He looks up.

“You’re lucky you’re ace otherwise I would fly over to wherever it is Wrathion lives and use his blood as syrup on my pancakes.”

This time, it’s Anduin who grasps Liam’s face. “ _You’re_ lucky I love you otherwise I would punch you right now.”

Liam shrugs. He accepts that fact.

It’s starting to settle in. Anduin is dating someone. Anduin never dates – Liam hadn’t really believed in Tess’s whole plan because of that. And Anduin is dating _Wrathion,_ who is possibly the biggest asshole Liam has ever had the misfortune to meet.

That’s a lot of facts. He’s not sure how well he’s processing them all.

“You’re going to have to explain this to Tess and Lorna, now,” he points out, and Anduin stares at him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. They don’t know?!”

“None of us knew! You didn’t tell us!”

“I thought it was obvious!”

“Thought what was obvious?”

They both spin around, twin looks of guilt and pure chagrin on their faces. Tess and Lorna are standing in the doorway. Tess has several shopping bags and Lorna is wearing a bright red coat, and they’re both regarding them with mild amusement.

“I am not explaining this again,” Anduin says flatly.

Liam groans, and Woofbite moves forward, whining compassionately. “Anduin has been corrupted and I will never be innocent again.”

“I have not!”

Tess wanders into the kitchen, and Liam can hear her unpacking the shopping bags. Whatever’s in them doesn’t sound healthy. He approves. “Liam, stop being dramatic. Anduin, explain, please.”

“I’m dating Wrathion.”

Something falls to the floor and smashes, and Tess’s head pops out of the doorway, a delighted smile spreading across her face. “You’re _what?!”_

Lorna is in front of Anduin before Liam can react, eyes sharp and mouth just shy of a scowl. “Anduin Llane Wrynn, are you lying to us right now?”

“You’re not my mother!” Anduin sputters, shoving her away. “Oh my God, we’ve been dating for months, how have none of you noticed? You’ve literally been trying to give us alone time!”

“We were trying to set you up!” Tess says, and she dives forward, bowling into Anduin and hugging him within an inch of his life. Liam leaps out of the way. He _knows_ how Tess can be dangerous. And heavy. And full of elbows.

Not quite in the same way that Anduin is, but together they could take out any army.

“When?” Tess demands, holding Anduin down in a pin that Lorna must have taught her. “How long have I been wasting my time?”

“Since October! Let go!”

“ _October?!”_

That was, evidently, the wrong reply. Anduin tries to wiggle out of the hold, but Tess is stronger than she looks and holds him firm. He appeals to Liam, who shakes his head, and then to Lorna, who is a lost case. She looks like she’s about to go find some popcorn and watch the show.

“I asked him five weeks after we met,” he explains hurriedly. “You guys were obviously okay with it, so I just, I thought you _knew._ You – I can’t believe you didn’t!”

Tess flops on top of him and he wheezes. Liam edges away a little further, but Lorna’s already got a hand on his shirt and pulling them all into a pile on the couch.

“Please get off me.”

“No,” Tess says, voice muffled by cushions, or perhaps that’s Liam’s knee. “You will suffer your punishment in silence and solitude.”

“I don’t think you understand what those words mean.”

“Stop talking back to your mother.”

“You’re not my mum!”

“Alright, children,” says Lorna from where she’s sitting on top of them all. Liam wishes he could be surprised, but he isn’t, because Lorna always comes out on top. She’s annoying like that.

At least, she usually does. Sometimes it’s just a façade, and sometimes it does crack. Liam has been there and done that and it hadn’t been enjoyable for anyone involved.

“Don’t children me,” he says, because he’s the oldest, damn it, he deserves some respect.

“Alright, children and baby,” she corrects, and Liam resigns himself to his fate. “Anduin, you’re supposed to tell your family when you start dating someone, because then we can take you out and get you drunk and make you regret all your life choices. Also, I need time to find your baby photos (“Hey!”) and I’m pretty sure you don’t have them here. Tess, homicide is, in fact, illegal.”

“Stop me.”

“I can and will. Probably.”

Tess sits up, dislodging the entire pile, and they rearrange themselves on the sofa. Anduin is in the middle, Liam on his left, Tess on his right, and Lorna lying across the back of the couch.

“This needs some sort of retribution,” Liam decides.

“It does not.”

“Shut up, Andy, you don’t get a say in this.” He scratches his beard. He gave it a trim yesterday, and now it’s strange, being able to feel his chin.

Woofbite decides to take that moment to give one of Liam’s shoes a warning growl, and begins to tug at the laces. Liam pushes him away idly, then the idea strikes him.

“You’re indirectly responsible for all those repair bills I’ve had to pay.”

Anduin sits up straight, glaring at him. “Don’t you da – ”

“A year. A year and you pay all of our repair bills.” Liam folds his arms. “You pay for guild repairs.”

“No!”

“Yes! Or I’ll tell your dad.”

Anduin blanches, and eyes him uncertainly. “You wouldn’t.”

Liam smirks and raises an eyebrow challengingly. He’s not sure how well he pulls the expression off, but damn it, he’s going to try. “Try me.”

Anduin watches him for a long moment, a Mexican stand-off between Liam’s natural stubbornness and the Wrynn Bloody-Mindedness. Lorna starts humming something dramatic underneath her breath.

“Fine.” Anduin throws up his hands and flops back. “Six months of guild repairs.”

“Eight.”

“Seven.”

“Deal.” Liam reaches forward and grabs the laptop, clicking Skype open and zoning in on Wrathion’s little icon. “Now, I’ve got a certain rogue to yell at.”

Anduin makes a frantic grab for the laptop, and Liam evades him, and Tess and Lorna just ignore them and go to start eating the long-since-cold pizza.

Liam does end up yelling at Wrathion, but under Anduin’s careful mitigation. Wrathion is clearly laughing at him. Somehow, Liam isn’t surprised. He isn’t taking himself seriously either.

“Listen,” Wrathion says when Anduin leaves to go help Lorna figure out how to beat the microwave into submission. “I understand that you were unaware of our relationship, but nonetheless, it has been a constant for several months. Hasn’t Anduin been happier?”

“He has,” Liam grudgingly admits.

“Then _that_ is what matters.” Wrathion gives him a serious look. “I’m fond of him. I can assure you, the very last thing I want to do is hurt him.”

Liam sighs. “Sometimes we do things that we don’t want to. We don’t mean it, but we do. People fuck up.”

“Yes,” Wrathion agrees. “They do. But it’s what they do _after_ that defines who they are.”

They have a Moment of Bonding, and then Liam slams the laptop shut and looks up as Anduin approaches. Lorna’s carrying the pizza boxes on one shoulder and Tess on the other.

“If you’ve finished harassing my datemate,” Anduin says, singsong, and Liam chucks the laptop at him. He catches it with a laugh, and settles down, opening it on his knees and drawing up the movie.

Lorna raises her glass. “To meddling friends.”

“To idiot friends.” Tess smiles widely and blows Lorna a kiss.

“To oblivious friends,” Liam says self-deprecatingly.

Anduin laughs, and dips his head. He rubs his eyes, a quick manoeuvre that’s gone in an instant, before he looks up again and smiles at them. Tess ruffles his hair. Lorna pecks him on the cheek. Liam punches him in the shoulder.

“To best friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lost interest in this fic a long time ago but lucky for you lot, i wrote the last chapter also a long time ago, so im scrapping the chapter between the two to close this little thing up and wash my hands of it. merry christmas.


End file.
